The riders will no longer touch their knee to the ground before the start of Grand Prix races in 2022
The gesture, which was introduced at the beginning of the 2020 season following incidents of police violence in the United States, will not be continued for the 2022 season.
The F1 recently announced that it will no longer allocate a moment for drivers to make a gesture in support of an important cause before the start of the Grand Prix races.
This moment granted to the drivers was introduced at the beginning of the 2020 season, following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the United States, and most of them expressed it by taking a knee, a symbol of the fight against racism.
Stefano Domenicali, CEO of F1, explained that the discipline is going to move from gestures to action in order to make it more diverse and inclusive, particularly by implementing a series of scholarships and apprenticeships for underrepresented groups, which allowed ten students to start engineering studies in the United Kingdom and Italy.
“This gesture (putting the leg on the floor, editor’s note) was important for those who believed it was an important gesture, because we must respect everyone,” explained the former director of Scuderia Ferrari to the British channel Sky Sports. “But now it is time to take action. And the action is to dedicate more efforts to make our community more diverse, and this is the first step.”
The four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel said he was surprised by this announcement: “I think the problems we are fighting will not be solved in the next two years to come. So I was a bit surprised,” he confided to Motorsport.com. “I hope that we, as drivers, will find a way to come together and find a moment to continue discussing the issues that are important to us. Maybe not all drivers feel affected by this, but I think there are some who really feel concerned. And it would be great to come together.” But maybe on the business side, these actions were too strong and too individual.
The officials of F1 have announced that they have briefed Lewis Hamilton on this matter, the seven-time world champion being vocal about the lack of diversity in motorsport. The Mercedes driver said that Domenicali’s comments were logical and that he has high hopes for positive changes in the future: “It’s a matter of traction now, so it’s something I look forward to seeing in the long term,” said the British driver on Thursday at the Barcelona circuit. “I had a great phone call with all the teams about being part of this charter school, so that all the teams try to increase diversity in our sport. I suppose it’s now about more than just words and gestures, but really taking concrete actions. I wonder if we really need to have this moment before the GP. We should have the opportunity to do it at any time, actually. But I think we can do something more impactful than this slogan (‘End racism’), with everything brought together as one. But I don’t know yet what.”
It is not excluded that Hamilton will be allowed to kneel at another point during the pre-Grand Prix ceremony – probably near his race car.
The F1 explained that all the teams had been informed of the intention to no longer grant this moment to the drivers before the race, long before the decision was recently announced.
